. >> host: you write, if karl rove was george w. bush's brain, then david axlerod is the barack obama's homer. >> guest: his what? >> host: homer. >> guest: that's a pretty good line i wrote there. [laughter] well, he is his homer. >> host: what do you mean by that? >> guest: what i mean is david axlerod is a brilliant creator of personal stories for politicians. so when barack obama ran in twaipt, -- in twaipt, he didn't have a record to run on, because he hadn't done anything. what he did have to run on was his personal story. the son of an african, black african and a white middle-american mother. a man who sought his identity and found it, who have raised by his, these saintly grandparents and so forth and so on. this was a story, a homerric story, if you will, because homer was with known for talking about taking a trip and coming to some understanding of one's self. this was the story that david axlerod fashioned for obama to run on, a brilliant story. the problem is, in 2012 there is no such story. we've seen that story, we k